Take-home vs. whiteboard coding: The problem is bad interviews

Re:Take-home vs. whiteboard coding: The problem is bad inter... by koonsolo on Friday April 10, 2020 @02:15AM (#22830461)

> are they a great candidate that cut corners, or a less experienced candidate that used stackoverflow

Strange reasoning. If you want to cut corners, you use stack overflow.

Unless you know by heart the optimal way on how to reverse a string in C#, you do a 3 second google search and do a 5 sec copy paste of the one liner, from the top answer on stack overflow.

When I was programming as a 14 year old and came across a problem, it sometimes took me a day to figure something out. There was no internet back then. Now the most obscure issue is probably nicely documented with a top 5 of solutions.

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Re:Take-home vs. whiteboard coding: The problem is bad inter... by sokoloff on Friday April 10, 2020 @07:55AM (#22832084)

IMO, using stackoverflow is closer to the opposite of cutting corners. No sense laboring to create something that is a 45 second Google search away.

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Re:Take-home vs. whiteboard coding: The problem is bad inter... by avgDev on Friday April 10, 2020 @01:48PM (#22835391)

I agree with googling stuff but this gives me anxiety, even though I can create relational databases, use ORM/stored procedures/queries, write web apps, deploy to IIS/Docker. I still worry about looking for the next gig. I did write a complete mission critical solution for a mid-size business, used by 100+ employees but then I am asked about algorithms and I could answer 3 years ago but now I would get stuck on it.

Also, when I interviewed a year ago I was asked to find if something is a palindrome. This is programming 101 and it caught me off-guard. I got so used to all the methods available in C#, that going back to pen/paper and writing a simple for loop felt odd.

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Re:Take-home vs. whiteboard coding: The problem is bad inter... by chrisbennet on Friday April 10, 2020 @09:24AM (#22832736)

There are two good reasons to look things up on the internet:

1. Obviously, its faster. I, personally, get paid for results, not for how "clever" I am. (Which is good, 'cause I'm not very clever.)

2. Frequently, the answer on the internet is better/more complete/tested. Take implementing a Singleton class; its so simple that anyone could make one. Most home grown implementations would have race condition though.

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